History: English units are the historical units of measurement in medieval England which evolved as a combination of the Anglo-Saxon and Roman systems of units. They were redefined in England in 1824 by a Weights and Measures Act, which retained many but not all of the unit names with slightly different values, and again in the 1970s by the International System of Units as a subset of the metric system. (From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_units)
Guiding Question: What is the importance of having an International measuring system? How accurate are old measurements using body parts?
Hypothesis: (What do you think?)
The old measurement systems are not accurate at all because they depend on are physic and as you know we all have different physics , some are tall, some have big feet, some are small , some have small feet. So for somebody the span could be 20cm than for somebody else it could be of 7cm. It’s why it’s important to have an international measuring system.
Materials:
· Partner
· Objects in the classroom (whiteboard, desk, hallway, SPACE book, Peep, Crayon box)
· List of ways to measure:
Pace: legs outstretched =1 yard approximately or 1 meter
Egyptian cubit= elbow to tip of the middle finger= 18 inches or 45 cm
Fathom = middle finger to middle finger across the body = 6 feet, 180 cm, 1.8m
Palm = across the palm of the hand = 3 inches or 8 cm
Hand including thumb = 4 inches or 10 cm
Span = from tip of thumb to tip of little finger= 3 palms or 9 inches or 24 cm
English yard = from fingertip of arm to nose = 36 inches or about 1 meter
Foot = 12 “or 30 cm approximately
Fingernail = tip of pinky =1/2 inch = 1 cm.
· Meter stick or measuring tape
· Calculator
Procedure:
1. Make a data table in your notebook with 7 columns and 7 rows. (See below).
2. Choose one of the six objects or distances you will measure.
3. Determine what form of measurement you will make with the first object. (For example: Length of the 6th grade hallway with paces, book with palm or hand, fingernail for crayon box, etc…)
4. Measure it with the determined form of measurement 3 times, and then find the average.
5. Measure it with the meter stick/or measuring tape and find the actual measurement. (IMPORTANT!!!!! BE SURE THAT THE UNITS OF MEASUREMENT STAY THE SAME, either inches or centimeters or yards or feet or meters and the average needs to be in the same units)
6. Repeat the same for each of the five objects that are left and measure it with a different type of measurement, 3 times, find the average and again the actual measurement.
7. Compare class data results. Find the average of these results.
Record & Analyze
Data Table:
Object | Measure-ment Type | Measure-ment #1 | Measure-ment #2 | Measure-ment #3 | Average | Actual Measurement |
Crayon box | fingertip | 8,5cm | 18cm | 8,5cm | 11.666… | 9.30 cm |
Book | Palm | 40cm | 40cm | 32cm | 37.4 | 3d |
Hallway | Pace | 9.30 | 10 | 10.3 | 9.8 | 6m |
Whiteboard | fathom | 330cm | 330cm | 320cm | 326.66… | 2.52m |
Peep | span | 1m | 1m | 1.8m | 1.666… | 1.4m |
Desk/table | Egyptian | 120 | 140 | 125 | 1.2666 | 1,37m |
Graph: You may choose to make a graph to make the data easier to analyze. Highlight the Object column and Average and Actual Measurement columns and Insert bar graph. You may decide to translate all the units into either inches or centimeters for the averages and actual measurements which may make it easier to analyze as well, but BE AWARE that this may ruin your results.
Data Analysis:
What patterns or relationships do you see between the forms of measurement, the averages you and your partner got and the actual measurement for each object?
Sometimes we were close to the right answer but only ONE time we had one of our partner correct one the actual size of the object. What was pretty cool was that my other partner and I had few times the same answer. Sadly our average showed that we couldn’t rely one ancient measuring systems because not even one time our average was even close to the actual size of the object.
Conclusion: How effective were the old English forms of measurement compared to using the meter stick or measuring tape? What is the importance of having an International measuring system? Answer the guiding question here. Was your hypothesis correct in the beginning? If no, what do you think now? Which objects were the easiest or most accurate to measure? Which form of measurement did you prefer the most? State why for both questions. Give examples to help you explain.
The old English forms are not accurate and take more time to measure compared to meters or feet because each person in this world have different physics and size. It’s why it is important to have an international measuring system, I’m going to give you an example: if we used the Old English measurement one architect with very long legs might say to the architect with who his working that it’s 11 pace (22m) , but when the other architect who has small legs tries it it is only 5m long. I really liked using the old English measurements because I found it very creative but sadly it is not reliable.
Further inquiry: What improvements would you make next time? What errors did you and your partner make? Do you have any further questions about measurement? If so, what were they?
First next time I hope I’ll be here when we begin this experiment, yes we made errors, we thought that on the graph we had to write the ancient measurement and not translate the ancient measurement into centimeters. I think that an experiment that we could do would be to create our own measurement and see how it works. It could be fun and at the end we could try to make a group work using those measurements to see how it works.
